Personality and National Character

210 Pages·1971·3.05 MB·English

by  R. Lynn and H. J. Eysenck (Auth.)

Personality
and
National Character
R. L Y N N
P E R G A M O N P R E S S
OXFORD • NEW YORK • TORONTO
SYDNEY • BRAUNSCHWEIG
Pergamon Press Ltd., Headington Hill Hall, Oxford
Pergamon Press Inc., Maxwell House, Fairview Park, Elmsford,
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Vieweg & Sohn GmbH, Burgplatz 1, Braunschweig
Copyright © 1971 R. Lynn
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
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Pergamon Press Ltd.
First edition 1971
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 71-149707
Printed in Great Britain by A. Wheaton & Co., Exeter
08 016516 8
PREFACE
IN THIS book I attempt to analyse the problem of national character from
the point of view of contemporary psychology. The thesis presented is that
among the advanced nations there are differences in the level of anxiety
in the population. The anxiety level manifests itself in various ways, such
as the incidence of suicide, mental illness, accidents, tobacco consumption
and so forth. The thesis demands that all these supposed manifestations of
the anxiety level should be associated together so that they form a pattern,
and the existence of this pattern is demonstrated in the body of the book.
It may be appropriate here to indicate briefly the scope of the argument.
Three limitations are particularly important. First, this book does not aim
to present a complete description of the national character of the people of
every country, or indeed of any country. It is concerned only with the
trait of anxiety. The thesis should be regarded as a simple model of one
aspect of the real world. This simplification of reality is of course one of
the hallmarks of scientific method, and in this respect the thesis to be
presented follows the canons of scientific procedure.
Secondly, neither does this book purport to present a complete explana-
tion for suicide, mental illness, accidents and the other phenomena which
are interpreted as indices of national anxiety level. For all these things
there are no doubt many determinants. But they are irrelevant for our
purpose, which is only to abstract the significance of anxiety from the
complexities of reality.
Thirdly, although anxiety appears to be an important determinant of a
number of epidemiological and other national differences among contem-
porary advanced countries, it should not be supposed that anxiety need
always, in other circumstances, be equally important or significant. Where
phenomena have several causes, the contribution of any particular cause
depends upon its variability among the set of cases, and also upon the
variability of the other causes. Thus there may well be other sets of
countries where anxiety is not a significant cause of national differences in
the epidemiological and other conditions discussed in this book. The
vii
viii PREFACE
principle here can be illustrated by a simple example. Consider two pieces
of metal of equal length. Now heat one and it becomes longer than the
other. Why is it longer? Because it has been heated. But this does not mean
to say that whenever one piece of metal is longer than another it is because
it has been heated up. The same is true of the significance of anxiety as a
cause of national differences among contemporary advanced nations. The
thesis does not imply that anxiety is always a significant factor in national
differences.
It remains for me to mention my appreciation of the help I have received
from others in writing this book. I am particularly indebted to Professor
Sir Cyril Burt and to Professor H. J. Eysenck for their critical comments
on an early draft of this book. My debt to them is also great because the
thesis I present rests on the foundations of their work on factor analysis
and its application to personality. Mrs. B. O'Sullivan and Miss S. Hampson
have given me much assistance in the collection of data. I am indebted to
my wife for her translations of the Russian psychiatric literature.
Economic and Social Research
Institute, Dublin
INTRODUCTION
By SIR CYRIL BURT
I GLADLY respond to the suggestion that I should write a brief psycho-
logical introduction to this book. I do so all the more willingly because I
believe, as Professor Lynn does, that the problems he has raised are of
urgent importance, and have been unduly neglected. The wars that so
unexpectedly overtook us during the first half of the century, the vastly
increased facilities for travel, the waves of migration from one country to
another, and the frequent racial conflicts within the same country, have all
rendered us more and more aware of the wide divergences between people
of different national origin. What, Professor Lynn asks, is the precise
nature of these national or racial differences, how far are they innate and
how far the result of cultural or educational influences? Why, to use the
current phraseology, are some nations comparatively "undeveloped" and
others "advanced"? What in short are the principal causes at work?
It is curious that hitherto there have been so few attempts to study these
questions by strictly scientific procedures. Politicians, social reformers and
the writers who discuss such topics in our popular weeklies and monthlies,
are ready to dogmatise and to contradict each other with supreme self-
confidence. But their conclusions are manifestly based on little more than
subjective impressions, armchair speculation and their own personal
ideologies. During the present century almost the only British investigator
who has attempted anything like an objective and systematic study is
William McDougall. Yet when we turn to his book on The Group Mind,
a work which claims to "apply psychological principles to the inter-
pretation of national character", all we find is a purely descriptive and
theoretical treatment, differing but little from that of Buckle, Bagehot,
Kidd and their French contemporaries, a hundred years ago. In his later
volume on National Welfare and National Decay he compares Morselli's
maps of divorce and suicide with Ripley's map of hair-colour (as a clue
to race), and refers incidentally to a few results obtained with mental
ix
X INTRODUCTION
tests by his own research-students and by American army psychologists;
but the actual data have manifestly had little to do with shaping the
author's own convictions.
The reader has only to glance at the first of Professor Lynn's chapters to
see how very different is the treatment he has here adopted. Instead of
mere personal impressions varying from one individual to another, we
have tables of quantitative data based on detailed references which anyone
who wishes can verify for himself. These are subjected to the same statisti-
cal techniques as those already applied with such fruitful effect to the
study of individual differences—the calculation of correlation coefficients
and a subsequent factor analysis. No doubt there will be critics who demur
to the choice of the initial data or of the factorial procedures; so much the
better if it provokes other pioneers to try their hands with a different set of
facts and some other statistical method. The real merit of Professor
Lynn's work is to have pointed out the direction which future investi-
gators must follow—the collection of objective data and the application of
scientific techniques.
The lists of variables set out in the graphs and tables that follow and the
numerous references in the bibliography show how broadly Professor
Lynn's preliminary inquiries have ranged. And for that very reason his
book should have an equally wide appeal. It should interest not merely
sociologists, anthropologists and economists, from whose several fields he
has culled much of his data, but also educationists, physicians and psychia-
trists, and indeed all who appreciate the importance of studying human
progress and welfare.
To appreciate the reasons for the unexpectedly disparate kinds of data
that Professor Lynn has collated it will perhaps be helpful to fall back on
the analogous type of inquiry that I have already mentioned. How does the
psychologist proceed when he is investigating the influences that are
responsible for differences—between different persons—the differences, for
example, between the gifted child on the one hand and the dull or backward
on the other?
In compiling his case-history for a given individual the psychologist
commonly starts with what seem to be the relevant environmental condi-
tions. He then proceeds to examine both physical and mental characteris-
tics, the latter including not only intellectual deviations, but also peculiar-
ities of temperament and character. Similarly, in studying the differences
between nations, we naturally think first of the geographical, geological,
INTRODUCTION xi
and climatic conditions under which the inhabitants live—the mineral
resources, the fertile or mountainous character of the land, the presence of
a sea-board with natural harbours along contemporary trade-routes, the
temperature, the humidity, and the rapidity of meteorological changes.
These were the causal agencies on which pre-Darwinian writers laid great
stress, and which later writers held to be indirectly responsible for the
adaptive variations produced by natural selection during what Bagehot
called the race-making stage. They may be necessary conditions for
economic growth; but they are not sufficient conditions. Human factors—
the arrival or emergence of a people with adequate physical, intellectual,
and motivational characteristics are essential.
The physical characteristics would include not only bodily health and
vigour, but also the distinctive features associated with different racial
types, not forgetting one of the most significant of all—the so-called
"blood group". Mental characteristics are commonly divided into cognitive
(practical as well as intellectual) and motivational (temperament and
character). And each of these can be subclassified into tendencies that are
presumably innate and those that are acquired by tradition, education,
and various cultural influences. Of the cognitive characteristics the most
frequently discussed and studied is innate general ability, popularly termed
"intelligence". Unfortunately, nearly all current tests of intelligence are
appreciably influenced by variations in culture; they are therefore far less
useful in studying racial differences than in studying individual differences.
There are marked differences between the means obtained for different
races; but, with few exceptions, they are relatively small as compared with
the individual differences within each racial or national group. What
appears to be far more important is the range of individual variation,
particularly in the upper direction. During the periods of their greatest
advance—the Periclean age in Athens, the Augustan age in Rome, and our
own Elizabethan and Victorian eras—each nation has been exceptionally
prolific of gifted individuals emerging in various walks of life. It seems
highly likely that isolation makes for relative homogeneity, while the
mingling of different racial stocks in consequence of migration, conquest,
or the like, and the recombination of genes that ensues, makes for richer
variations.
Motivational characteristics are still more difficult to assess. And yet,
as Professor Lynn's results reveal, they are probably much more influential.
The early investigations of mine, which he cites with approval, have
xii INTRODUCTION
frequently been misquoted and misunderstood. So may I briefly explain
what was the evidence on which I relied? I endeavoured to pick out
representative individuals, children as well as adults, who exhibited most
conspicuously those physical characteristics which Ripley and others had
described in their classification of European races. Judged by observations,
interviews and tests of personality, there appeared to be a well-marked
contrast between the South European (or "Mediterranean") type and the
North European (or "Nordic") type. The former seemed more sociable,
loquacious, vivacious, and impulsive; their emotions were promptly and
freely expressed, and as quickly subsided. The latter seemed to be more
reserved, self-sufficient, self-assertive, and self-controlled; they were
characterised by greater independence and individuality—eager to
explore, investigate, and decide for themselves; their emotions were
equally strong, but more firmly repressed and far more persistent. The
mid-European (or "Alpine") type seemed on the whole more phlegmatic
than either of the other two—slower and more conservative, yet at the
same time shrewd and secretive, and (in many of my own cases) marked
by strong aesthetic interests—a love of art and music. These differences
are, of course, no more than average tendencies; and no doubt the scheme
is oversimplified. But the suggestion that they are in part the effect of
innate physiological and biochemical differences, surviving from an earlier
race-making stage, seems in some measure confirmed by the way they will
continue to reveal themselves when children of one type are adopted by
foster-parents of a different type—e.g. Irish children adopted by English
foster-parents, English by Welsh, and so on. However, among present-day
populations the more conspicuous differences in character and daily
habits would seem to be chiefly the result of differences in type of culture
and traditional ideals of behaviour, transmitted by parents and older
companions. Moreover, within the same nation these qualities may vary
widely from one social class to another, and have often undergone con-
siderable modification during the past phases of the nation's history. This
means that a favourable social environment is even more important than
the physical. The exceptionally able and enterprising members of the
nation who should form its more effective leaders can exercise their powers
to the full only in periods of peace and security and within a community
that is free, tolerant and politically well organised. Extremes of individual-
ism and of self-assertive motivation in the general mass of the population,
coupled with an unwillingness to accept the authority of competent leaders,
INTRODUCTION xiii
ultimately issue, as history all too plainly testifies, not in progress but in
chaos.
In the field of individual psychology what is so remarkable is the fact
that, as numerous correlational studies have shown, favourable conditions
under each of these widely divergent headings—mental and physical,
cognitive and motivational, environmental and hereditary—tend to go
together; and now as Professor Lynn's results show the same holds true
of national characteristics. "The aim of a genuinely scientific generalisa-
tion", so Eddington has assured us, "is not just to produce a plausible
hypothesis and confirm it by collecting relevant facts, but rather to reduce
to a single, relatively simple, and comprehensive formulation the widest
possible variety of observations, and at the same time suggest further
inferences and fresh problems which may provide starting-points for
future research." This has been the bold and far-reaching aim which
Professor Lynn has set out to fulfil; and, if we can accept his conclusions
as they stand, we must agree that he has gone far towards accomplishing
it. He has compiled from the scattered literature a vast array of quanti-
tative data from seemingly unrelated areas, symptomatic of the various
aspects I have just enumerated; and on applying the methods of factorial
analysis used in individual psychology, has shown that "one common
underlying factor" pervades almost all of them. This he identifies with an
emotional drive which he tentatively labels "anxiety". "Anxiety", as he
defines the concept, is in his view one of the most powerful incentives for
prolonged and purposeful activity.
Perhaps the most interesting of Professor Lynn's chapters are those in
which he adduces evidence to show that the basic factor which he has thus
demonstrated forms the main agent making for rapid economic growth.
From Weber onwards several economists and sociologists have attacked
this problem. Professor McClelland, for example, who has also used
correlational techniques, concludes that the distinctive quality character-
ising "achieving societies" is the "achievement motive". This conclusion
has been criticised as "an example of the old faculty fallacy, long ago
pilloried by Moliere". But in point of fact Professor McClelland endeav-
oured to estimate the achievement motive by independent tests. Professor
Lynn has gone one better—he has devised a questionnaire for directly
assessing the achievement motive, and finds that it is apparently un-
corrected with the more general factor that he names "anxiety". Certain
critics no doubt may reject both the specification and the simplification;
xiv INTRODUCTION
others may argue that some of the items in his table (e.g. "car-deaths"
and "suicide") indicate the effects of economic growth rather than its
causes. But once again let us remember Eddington's description of a
scientific generalisation as one which not only professes to solve old
problems, but also provokes new ones for further research.
For the most part Professor Lynn's data relate to conditions obtaining
in his selected set of countries during the post-war period—the period
which for us is of greatest importance in view of the practical issues with
which we are confronted at the present time. Let us hope he will extend
his studies to earlier stages in world-history, so that his theory may be
tested by the light thrown on economic development and the progress of
civilisation in the past. His conclusions, as he himself has emphasised, are
tentative and provisional. What I should like chiefly to commend are the
methods he has adopted. Only by the collection of objective and quanti-
tative data and the application of modern statistical techniques can the
illuminating theories he has advanced be verified, amplified, criticised, or
amended.